Just got back from this. This was a ton of fun. Great vfx and nice nods to other movies, including the entire cinematography of the film and a boat ride up a river in homage to Apocalypse Now.

The post-credits scene set up future films in this cinematic universe nicely too.

I loved Kong's design. Evoked O'Brien's original and gave him that primordial, mythical look.

I really liked that they went in some new directions with the creatures and didn't just do dinosaurs. The time period was a good choice too as it was before we had effectively mapped every square inch of ground via our spy sat…I mean our completely benign satellite network.

A couple of qualms like way too many characters leaving too little time to effectively develop any of them really. And Kong perhaps needed a few more quiet moments amidst all the action but there were some nice bits, especially with the scene with Brie Larson's character.

Initial review of Kong is strong. Not gonna' lie, I went into the movie kind of expecting to hate it. Don't ask me why, because I really don't know. The opening act seemed kind of odd at first, to the point where I kind of looked around to see if anyone else was thinking the same thing as me with "I AM in the right movie, right?" Obviously that was quickly remidied.

Biggest fault I could find is that outside of Goodman and maybe John C. Reilly, I kind of felt like everyone was phoning it in. And the fact that Goodman's death was so anticlimactic and unceremonious that I actually laughed. Like, I'd argue he was THE main character of the movie (sorry, Hiddleston, but you're the Jurassic World Chris Pratt of the movie, the cocky a-hole who doesn't change) and he kicks the bucket with 30 minutes left in such a blue-ball way. And the Scooby-Doo level coincidence of the Skullcrawler coughing up Toby Kebbell's half-digested skull at the right moment and right place that rolled in the perfect position for Hiddleston's 40/20 vision to see that the dog tag - which was conveniently free of blood, slime and digestive juices that might've obscured it - had his name on it. That and the ham-fisted, obligatory "My name is Nick Fury Lite and I'm here to talk to you about the MONARCH Initiative, also please watch these trailers for Rodan, Mothra and King Ghidorah". But who cares, because we're gonna' get more kaiju movies!!!!!!!

But even with all of that, hot dang, what a treat. Even as a dinosaur fanatic like me, without any dinosaurs, it was a nice change of pace. The variety of creatures were so cool. This is a perfect example of how you do a remake of a movie that already had a movie released a short while ago and how to properly differentiate between them and keep things fresh. All of the Skull Island creatures were fantastic, the VFX were fantastic, Kong himself was fantastic x10.

VFX-wise, again, wonderful. There were only a handful of iffy shots that I can recall (mostly people standing against glaringly obvious green-screen), but so many of the environment shots had me fooled as to where real photography ended and CG extension began. Kong's design and animation were fascinating to watch and compare to Weta's work on Jackson's.

John C. Reilly's character was far and away the best of the bunch. Crazy character that was just unhinged enough it kept you guessing if he might shoot Sam Jackson's character at one point.

Goodman's character was good but you are right. They just dispatched him quickly, perhaps too quickly.

I still don't get this desire with modern films of cramming dozens of human characters into what is essentially a monster movie. Give us just a handful and spend time on just those people. Instead we get virtually an entire platoon of grunts, a handful of scientists, and a crazy guy and his villagers.

And only Reilly's character had any real…well character.

Can I say something about the wardrobe's I am seeing women wear in these films: is it a requisite that they all must wear tank tops? Seriously, do the studios all buy from a huge tank top warehouse in China? I see this over and over. Howard in Jurassic World, check, Ridley in Star Wars, check, this film, check.

This article also adds to what I've gleaned from numerous articles about Michael Bay, Transformers, and ILM: people enjoy working with Bay. He does push them to do great work. King's next film is Transformers: The Last Knight, due in theaters this Summer.

Didn't like too much the movie when i saw it the first time, one year ago, then i saw it again on dvd and... didn't like either

Btw superb VFX( Kong 's fur rendition is incredibly intricate and complex, loved the water buffalo and the giant skullcrawler too) but for me they are the only saving grace of the movie, along with Larry Fong 's cinematography.